


Waiting for the Click

by waketosleep



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Angst, Canon Deaths Only, Closeted Character, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, IT Chapter Two Spoilers, M/M, Mid-Canon, Missing Scene, Movie: IT Chapter Two (2019), Not A Fix-It, Panic Attacks, Possibly Unrequited Love, Post-IT Chapter Two (2019), Queer Character, Queer Themes, Richie Tozier Has ADHD, Richie Tozier Has PTSD, Richie Tozier is a Mess, Richie Tozier's Stand Up Act, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:08:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28362168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waketosleep/pseuds/waketosleep
Summary: "Oh my god," said Eddie. "Fine. Thank you, Richie, for setting my arm that one time when we almost got murdered by a demon clown anyway. I admit that you somehow managed to do it more or less correctly, probably by accident. Thank you also fornotstitching up the stab-hole in my cheek, because I would rather have itheal as a fucking holethan let you near my face with a sharp needle. I'll go to the ER when we're done with this bullshit."Richie chuckled. "I'll take you.""Fucking right, you will," said Eddie.***Missing scenes from IT Chapter Two, covering some of what Richie got up to when he wasn't onscreen and adding some of that character development they must have cut for time, and a second chapter containing the highly questionable stand-up comedy show Richie found himself performing three weeks after leaving Derry.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak & Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 2
Kudos: 41





	1. Let's Not, and Say We Did

**Author's Note:**

> Once every 27 months, my ancient and omnipresent crush on Bill Hader wakes from its slumber and demands sacrifices to slake its terrible thirst. I have no new episodes of Barry to watch (thanks, pandemic) so I finally watched IT Chapter Two. And then I looked at AO3, burst out laughing at how big the fandom is, and read some enjoyable fix-its (love a good time loop, thanks).
> 
> And then I wrote this. The first chapter of this fic is a bunch of missing scenes for Richie, for all the character development I assume they cut out of the movie. The second chapter is a stand-up set (I put the details in the first chapter's end notes).
> 
> This is not a fix-it. I tagged for angst, which on my fics is always a red flag. It's definitely funny, but it’s sad too, so, uh, I warned you.
> 
> Content warnings: graphic descriptions of panic attacks and vomiting (in the first scene). The references to Neurodiverse Problems (TM) and queer angst might also hit different. If you hit a ‘nope’ moment you can just scroll down to the next *** scene break. You're responsible for yourselves.
> 
> As far as canon compliance goes: I haven't read the book and I'm not going to; I didn't rewatch Chapter One before I wrote this, or actually at all since I saw it the first time; I have headcanons and they are in here; and did you notice that this fucking movie takes place over like a day and a half?? Oof.
> 
> ETA: self, don’t fucking write author’s notes when you’re sleep deprived, you ramble too much

"This is the worst fucking dressing room I've ever seen," Richie muttered to himself, leaning back in his chair and looking around idly.

The deadened roar of applause filtered through the walls. The warm-up act was probably done. He checked his phone; yep, ten minutes till it was his turn to go on.

As though summoned by his thoughts, there was a knock on the closed dressing room door. "Ten minutes, Mr. Tozier," came a muffled voice through the door.

"Thanks, yeah," he called back, rubbing at the bridge of his nose under his glasses. He arched his back, listened to it crackle--skeleton of a man twice his age--and then set his phone facedown on the makeup table, so he wouldn't absentmindedly take it onstage.

No sooner had his fingers left the phone than it started ringing, vibrating softly on the table. Richie snatched his hand away as if he'd burnt it, then shook his head at himself and picked the phone up to see who the fuck was calling so close to his set. Anyone who'd dare try and talk to him right now should have been in the theatre with him.

Unknown number. Telemarketing robot, he decided, just about to toss the phone back down on the table when something snagged in his brain and he blinked, did a double-take at the number. It was a 207 area code. The phone said it was from Maine.

Richie's mouth went dry. Who the fuck did he know in _Maine_? He shouldn't bother answering this call, he told himself, and then he answered the call.

"Yeah?" he said in greeting, and then winced at himself.

_"Richie. It's Mike."_

Mike? Did he know a Mike? In Maine? "Um," he said, and licked his lips. His heart was starting to race; he told himself it was pre-show nerves. "Sorry man, your number's not in my phone. I'm gonna need a little more to go on than that."

 _"Mike Hanlon,"_ said the shiveringly deep voice in his ear. Mike Hanlon sounded amused that Richie didn't know who the fuck he was.

Richie's left hand was starting to itch like a bastard. Right in--right over that huge fucking scar across his palm, the one he liked to say he got from a satanic ritual when people asked about it, because that answer drew fewer questions than 'Yeah, I actually don't remember.'

He blinked at his reflection in the mirror. "Han--" And then his throat closed up around the end of the name. His scar was making him want to tear the skin out of his palm.

 _"From Derry,"_ said Mike, completely unnecessarily, because Richie knew exactly who the fuck Mike was now. Mike's face, aged 13, was crystal-clear in his mind's eye.

"Wh--uh, yeah. Mike. Yeah, of course." He breathed out an awkward little laugh. "Fuck, dude. It's been a hundred years."

 _"Feels that way some days,"_ Mike agreed.

"Look, uh, I am, don't get me wrong, I'm super glad you reached out," said Richie, levering himself up out of his chair with jerky, awkward motions. He couldn't feel his hands and feet all of a sudden. "I really am, dude, and I'd love to, like, catch up, hear what you've been up to, fucking… find out how you got this number--it's just, like, now's not the _best_ timing? I uh--I've got a show in like, eight minutes? A, a comedy show, I do stand-up com--"

 _"Comedy, yeah, I know,"_ Mike cut him off, his voice all low and rough and soothing in Richie's ear like he was trying to creep up on a spooked stray cat. _"Trashmouth Tozier. I've seen you on the TV, man. You were just on one of those late night talk shows a couple weeks ago. Jimmy Kimmel. I watched that."_

"Fallon," Richie corrected him reflexively. "It, uh, it was Jimmy Fallon. Not Kimmel." He winced at himself, pacing the tiny dressing room with the phone jammed against one ear and his free hand digging anxiously into his hair.

 _"Yeah, I knew it was Jimmy somebody,"_ Mike answered, totally unconcerned.

Richie snorted, his mouth tugging up into a tight smirk as he eased up on the pacing a little. "Easy mistake. So, listen, like I said, I have a show in eight--seven minutes now, I gotta get ready to go on. They're taping it, it's for a Netflix special. And I'm probably gonna go get drunk right after I'm done. So, since _I_ have _your_ number now, why don't I call you back tomorrow, and we'll catch up," he suggested, feeling deadly certain even as the words left his mouth that Mike was not going to accept that plan.

 _"No need,"_ said Mike, proving him right, _"I don't need seven minutes to say what I called to say."_

Richie's stomach turned.

Then Mike said the last seven words Richie could have wanted to hear, although he couldn't have said why. _"We can catch up tomorrow in person."_

"No," left Richie's mouth before he could even process that he was speaking. "No," he repeated, hearing his voice go high and ragged. His nose was filled with a cloying, rotting, damp smell he couldn't place. He tried to breathe through his mouth instead.

Mike was speaking again but Richie couldn't hear the words; he was too overwhelmed by the hot, prickly wave that roared up from his feet to his throat. His scarred palm went clammy against his phone, the nagging itch becoming a burn. The room started to spin slowly. His mouth wasn't dry anymore; he swallowed a mouthful of spit, and that smell hit him again.

Dimly, he realized he knew what Mike was telling him anyway. He remembered standing in knee-high grass, trampled into a circle around a fallen log to expose the bits of old trash scattered across the ground. He remembered the evening sun flashing off the chunk of broken glass in Bill's hand. He remembered Bill himself, dragging the point of that dirty chunk of glass across Richie's palm, his supporting hand feeling just as clammy as Richie felt now. He hadn't been prepared for how much it hurt, considering it cut through his skin as easy as a knife through warm butter.

Mike was telling him to go back to Derry. Mike was calling in the _actual blood oath_ he'd sworn (that fucking 'satanic ritual' bit of his was so close to the truth that he'd find it hilarious if he could remember how to laugh right now). There'd been a bunch of them, a whole group. He couldn't remember what any of them looked like except Mike and Bill. There were a couple other B-names.

 _"Tomorrow,"_ cut through the ringing in his ears. Richie blinked and found himself crouching on the floor, making himself small and protecting his head. He swallowed back more spit flooding his mouth and refocused on Mike's voice. _"Can you do that?"_ Mike asked.

"Can I--really, tomorrow?" Richie said weakly. "I don't--"

_"Has to be, man. We don't have a lot of time and we won't get another chance. I'll see you soon. And, uh, break a leg, I guess?"_

_'Another chance for what?'_ Richie couldn't ask, because his tongue was too thick in his mouth and he didn't trust himself to speak anymore, anyway. He didn't hear if Mike said goodbye. His phone was clutched in his scarred hand (fucking _blood oath_ , what the _fuck_ ) as he threw his shoulder into the fire escape door, no memory of the 20 feet of backstage hallways he'd just taken from his dressing room to get there. _Fuck memories anyway,_ he thought vaguely as he staggered through the door, his mouth clenched tightly shut.

He almost didn't make it to the railing in time. He had no idea what he was puking on in the alley down below. The only thing there was room for in his head, as he lost his pre-show anxiety dinner over the fire escape railing, was _'Not on the suit, no time to change clothes'._

His ears were still ringing. The railing was cold against his wrists and edges of the peeling paint poked into his skin a little, flaked off and stuck to the heel of his hand. The air he was taking big, ragged gulps of wasn't even slightly fresh. It smelled like car exhaust, and cigarette smoke, and faintly of the dumpster down below. But it didn't smell like rotting plants and polluted water in the sun. It was the canal, that smell. The fucking canal in fucking Derry, it was that fucking sweet-rotten smell it would always pick up by the end of August; that smell had coated the back of his throat anytime he'd made the mistake of breathing nearby.

Someone was talking to him. There was a handkerchief fluttering against his arm. He grabbed it with numb fingers. "--Good? Because you look _not_ good."

Fuck. The show. He wiped his face off roughly and hoped to fuck he hadn't gotten any puke on his clothes. "I'm fine," he said, pushing the handkerchief back into his manager's hands and shoving past him to rush back inside. His chest felt tight and he told himself sternly that he was definitely _not_ charging headlong into a Category 5 panic attack, because he had an hour-long set to go tape _right now_ , for a packed 400-seat theatre and a Netflix deal that was going to hurt way too much to back out of.

It was just some pre-show butterflies, that was all. Nothing new. He'd already thrown up the entire contents of his stomach anyway, so he was good to go. This wasn't joint-locking, lung-freezing fear sitting on his chest. It was _anticipation._ Of his set, not tomorrow's new travel plans.

"Sixty seconds," said a tech hovering in the hallway. Fuck. This was going to be rough.

***

"This is so fucking stupid," he breathed, leaning his head back on the headrest in his rental Mustang--not his first choice, kind of a midlife-crisis ride, but 'hey, you're that guy' free upgrades didn't come with a lot of choices--and tapping his phone against his leg. "I should not be here."

He turned his phone right way up, reflexively opened Twitter, remembered instantly that he was _not_ looking at Twitter after bombing so hard last night he'd left a crater, put his phone back to sleep, and tossed it onto the passenger seat. His leg started to jiggle. "Should just fucking turn around and leave."

He propped his elbow on the door and stared blankly out of the side window until all the fucking neon lights on this suburban disaster of a restaurant blurred together into one giant, highlighter-toned rainbow. When his eyes started to water, he finally blinked and realized he'd just chewed his thumbnail ragged. "Fuck. Just leave, Rich. Just fucking turn the key and start the car and leave. Go get your shit from the hotel, drive straight back to the airport, and take the first red-eye heading west. The longer you sit in this car like an asshole, the more chance Mike will see you actually came. Like a fucking idiot."

He caught the flash of red hair from the corner of his eye and watched a lone woman approach the front door of the restaurant like she thought it might attack her. She was already at the entrance before Richie realized that was her actual hair colour and not some reflecting effect from all the neon lights. He blinked and shifted in his seat to get a better look at her, just as she turned away to greet Cristiano Ronaldo's better-looking clone.

"Fuck me," he muttered under his breath. He'd thought living in LA had jaded him to attractive men--spray tans and veneers as far as the eye could see--but apparently the world still had some surprises left in store for him.

The two attractive people were going in for a hug now. "Atta girl, Bev," Richie murmured, and then his heart stopped.

Bev. Marsh. Beverly Marsh. Then the man _had_ to be--

 _"Fuck me,"_ swore Richie, and scrambled to try to grab his phone off the passenger seat and open his car door at the same time.

B-names! Richie: 1; disturbing amnesia: 0.

Ben smelled _incredibly_ good, looked happy to see him, and was almost definitely a better hugger than Cristiano Ronaldo. Also, neither Bev nor Ben asked where he'd suddenly come from or how long ago he'd arrived at the restaurant. Richie mentally gave himself another point.

They walked inside the restaurant together, looking almost like they'd met here on purpose like a bunch of normal people, and Richie took a good look around as the hostess directed them to one of the private rooms. He decided he was going to have to revise his opinion of whoever had designed this restaurant, since it was now clear to him that the outside of the building was designed more thoughtfully than he'd been able to appreciate at first glance. Despite what he'd thought, it wasn't some tacky, retro-futuristic-done-incorrectly, desperate offering to the highway traffic gods made out of neon lights bought cheaply at an auction, or it wasn't _just_ that; obviously it was also a detailed and nuanced warning label as to what the inside of the place looked like. Like those poisonous rainforest frogs that were really brightly coloured. You ignored that shit at your own risk.

He was starting to wonder if that train of thought might make a good bit, and whether he should get his phone out to write it down before he forgot, when he heard a man's voice coming from the private room they were heading for. The voice carried loud and clear over the dinner-rush chatter of the restaurant just long enough for Richie to catch the words "fucked up", and just like that, all thoughts of poisonous frogs were gone and he nearly walked face-first into a giant fish tank.

What in the unholy fuck had happened to him in this town, that he'd managed to completely forget that Eddie Kaspbrak existed?

A tidal wave of memories broke over him in about four seconds, leaving him hanging onto the fish tank for dear life and feeling pretty sure he was about to puke for the second time in 24 hours.

"Richie?" He faintly registered Bev's voice coming from just behind him.

"Rich?" said Ben, inching into his peripheral vision. "Are you okay?"

 _'Absolutely the fuck not, because apparently I first knew I was gay when I was fucking 12 years old, not 26, and the reason I knew is waiting on the other side of that door,'_ Richie did not say. He stood up slowly, let go of the fish tank, straightened his glasses on his face, and said, "Yeah, man. I'm okay. It's just… a lot's hitting me all at once, you know?"

Bev gave him a shoulder squeeze that was more reassuring than it had any right to be, and they walked into the private dining room to meet the rest of… the Losers' Club, he remembered.

And that shoulder squeeze had really bloated his confidence levels, because Richie actually believed he might be able to keep his shit together like a functional adult, right up until he saw the back of Eddie's head across the room and the understanding hit him that no, he was completely fucked.

He was also staring. He needed to stop staring. He tore his gaze away from the line of Eddie's surprisingly _built_ shoulders under his unsurprising polo shirt, and it landed on a gong. And a gong hammer.

What better way to start off an absolute gong show? He picked up the hammer and gave it a good swing; the brassy crash made the hair stand up on his arms. Now he was the centre of everyone's attention, which was a position he knew how to work from.

"This meeting of the Losers' Club has officially begun," he announced, and watched the flicker of recognition on Eddie's face, with Bill not far behind him. Then everybody looked at Ben and an awkward silence fell.

Richie knew how to work with that, too.

"Hey, excuse me," he said to a passing waitress. "Can we get a round of whiskey shots, please?" he asked, holding up six fingers.

"Make that a bottle, actually," said Bev, hooking her chin over his shoulder.

Richie tilted his head towards her. "You're the only woman I ever loved."

"Richie," she chided. "What would Eddie's mom say?"

He threw his head back and laughed. "I'm so glad to see you, holy shit."

Bev hooked her arm around his and led him over to the table in the middle of the room, unsubtly nudging him into the chair beside her. "Me too, Rich. I've got 27 years of your dick jokes to catch up on."

"Good thing you went for the bottle, then," he said, catching Eddie's eye as he sat down. There was an extra chair between them, and he thought briefly that they should move it out of the way into the corner or something but then quickly forgot all about it, as the argument over what to order was already gearing up.

"Fuck's sake, Eds, why don't you just have water or something, if everything on the menu's gonna put you in the hospital?" he cut in, having flashbacks to standing in front of the ice cream shop by the movie theatre in July, trying to convince Eddie that he wasn't actually allergic to dairy or that even if he was, eating ice cream was a good way to die.

Eddie gave him an unimpressed look, which put him back on familiar ground.

"What?" he asked, straight-faced. "Oh my god. You can't have water anymore either?" Richie pressed a hand over his heart. "Oh, I'm so sorry, I didn't know. Thoughts and prayers."

" _Fuck_ you, Richie," Eddie spat, and the whole group cracked up laughing.

Richie sat back in his chair, smirking. He could tell from here that Eddie was biting the inside of his cheek to keep from breaking. He felt a little thrill deep in his chest, and then the waitress appeared with their bottle and a tray of shot glasses.

"Oh shit," said Eddie at the sight, "let's get this middle school reunion started!" And he stood up to do the pouring. He put the first poured shot in front of Richie without a look or a word, apparently moving on autopilot, and the feeling moved up to become a lump in Richie's throat. He needed to get out of the chair, move around, run away. His knee started jiggling under the table, and he reached out to fidget with his glass instead, before Bev or someone noticed his leg moving in an apparent nervous tic. He wasn't nervous, but he was directing all of his concentration to not opening his mouth and taking another shot at Eddie. As the rest of the glasses got doled out around the table, he breathed slowly through his nose and rotated his glass gently on the table with two fingers, watching the way the light from all the tacky fucking lamps hit the whiskey inside.

Everyone toasted and then tossed back their shots. The whiskey hit the back of Richie's tongue, sharp-edged with fumes, and _it was the weekend before his thirteenth birthday, about five months after Richie had figured out that he a) liked boys, and b) liked Eddie specifically. Eddie had somehow convinced his mom to let him out of the apron-strings long enough to go to Richie's house for a sleepover, and Richie had liberated a dusty bottle of fucking_ butter ripple schnapps _from his parents' poorly guarded liquor cabinet for the occasion._

_He'd expected to have to do a lot more work to convince Eddie to try it, so it knocked him a little off-kilter when he produced it with a flourish from his pit of a closet and Eddie reacted with three seconds of thoughtful frowning followed by, "Give it here," and some grabby hands._

_Richie dumbly handed the bottle over, wondering who this kid was and what he'd done with the Edwina that Richie knew and tragically loved, but then Eds set his world back on its feet again when he looked around Richie's bedroom, wrinkled his nose, and said, "You forgot to get glasses, fucknut. How are we supposed to drink this?"_

_"From the fucking bottle, Princess."_

_Eddie's nostrils flared with outrage. "You expect me to_ share drin-- _" Richie cut him off with a hand clapped over his mouth before he could reach a full-fledged screech._

_"Shut the fuck up or my mom's gonna come in to check on us," he hissed._

_Eddie, still glaring murder at him, licked the palm of Richie's hand and Richie yanked it away, wiping it off on his shirt._

_"Hypocrite," he accused, full of conflicting feelings about the fact that Eddie had just licked his fucking hand. Put his tongue on Richie's skin. Left his gross, wet spit on him._

_"Am not."_

_"Fuck you, you are too! You think it's too gross to drink out of the same bottle as me but you have no problem licking the hand I jerk off with. At least my mouth's never touched my dick. Believe me, I've tried."_

_Eddie looked like he was trying not to gag and grabbed wildly at the schnapps bottle. Richie watched in consternation as he ripped the cap off (chucking it at Richie's face, of course) and then took a big gulp of the contents like he was trying to wash the taste out of his mouth._

_Then again, mouthwash was basically alcohol, right?_

_When Eddie put the bottle down he winced and then gasped in a deep breath. "Fucking burns," he rasped. "But also tastes like candy? Old-people candies, though."_

_"Oh, so your favourite kind," said Richie cheerfully, swiping the bottle back when Eddie flipped him the bird. He wiped the mouth of the bottle on the hem of his shirt, raising his eyebrows in triumph like, 'See? See how smart I am?' before he took his own drink._

_Eddie was right. It tasted like someone had melted old-people candies into battery acid. He made a face down at the bottle, then shrugged and took another drink. Gross booze was still booze._

_Eds was apparently on the same page, because he plucked the bottle out of Richie's fingers, wiped it off (with a tissue from his fanny pack, which Richie snorted at), and took another, smaller swallow._

_Ten minutes later, they were both giggling hysterically. Richie couldn't remember what they were laughing at, but it was hilarious. He was lying on his back on the carpet and watched Eddie take the noticeably less-full bottle out of his hand again (Eddie was sideways and looked like he was sitting cross-legged on the wall instead of the floor, which was the funniest shit Richie had ever seen) and bring it to his wet, pink lips for another drink._

_Richie blinked and then burst out laughing._

_"What's so fucking funny, dipshit?" Eddie demanded, lowering the bottle and glaring._

_"Y-you," Richie wheezed, pointing shakily at him, "you didn't wipe it off first!" The end of his sentence disappeared in a fit of giggles as Eddie gave the bottle a wild look. "How's my spit taste?" he laughed._

_Eddie's mouth pressed into a tight, angry line for a second, and then he said, "Better than your dick."_

_Richie lost it. He had a stitch in his side. He had to drag his glasses off his face to wipe the tears out of his eyes. Eddie's blurry outline put the bottle down out of the way on the floor and then settled in to wait for him to get himself under control. Richie dragged a breath into his aching lungs, and then another one._

_"Are you done?" Eddie asked once he was down to just little hiccuping giggles. Eds was trying to sound annoyed but not really succeeding._

_Richie sat up and wiped at his eyes with the heel of his hand, his glasses still clutched in his other hand. "Are_ you _?" He asked when he could speak again, still breathless with it. "Or do you wanna take the Pepsi challenge again, make sure you picked the right choice?" Holy fuck, what was he saying right now? Was being drunk always like this? Not being able to see Eddie's face helped to push down the flash of panic._ Can't take it back now, Trashmouth, might as well double down and make it a joke, _he decided, and aimed a kissy face and a wink in Eddie's general direction._

 _The pink-and-brown blob that was Eddie moved suddenly. Richie thought,_ Oh fuck, he's gonna punch me, _and instinctively flinched backwards, shutting his eyes, but instead of a hit to the face he felt Eds' mouth. On his mouth. Richie's eyes flew open but Eddie had already pulled away from the kiss. His face was hovering so close for a second that it was crystal clear and Richie could have counted his fucking eyelashes, and then Eddie sat back and became a fuzzy outline again._

_Richie blinked several times, realized he was still clutching his glasses in his hand, and shoved them back on his face._

_Eddie had never looked so smug. Which was fair, because Richie had never been so speechless. It was an achievement._

_"Called your bluff, fuckface," said Eddie, leaning back on his hands. "Trashmouth can dish it out but he can't take it. As usual."_

_Richie licked his lips and cleared his throat, trying to find a comeback. "Take what?" he asked, his voice steadier than he'd expected. "You didn't even try my dick again."_

_Eddie raised an eyebrow and then got back up on his knees to shuffle back into Richie's space._

_Richie reared back. "Whoa, Spaghedward, what the fuck?"_

_Eddie just patiently beckoned him closer. "I need to tell you something."_

_Against all his better judgment, Richie moved closer._

_Eddie gave him an approving smile and leaned in, bringing them almost nose-to-nose. Richie breathed in sharply and smelled butterscotch._

_Eddie's smile flashed some white, white teeth and he bypassed Richie's lips at almost the last second to whisper in his ear,_ "I fucked your mom." __

_And then he broke down laughing as Richie shoved him away, sending him sprawling onto his back on the carpet._

_"You're a dick," Richie told him, and reached for the schnapps again because it was either that or tackle Eddie and kiss the stupid grin off his face._

"--chie. Richie!" A hand delivered something in between a pat and a slap to his left cheek. He focused on the black leather watchband behind the hand and then his eyes followed a red-jacketed arm up to Eddie's 40-year-old face.

His eyelashes were still fucking ridiculous.

"The fuck, man?" Richie growled, ducking away from the hand.

"Where the fuck were you just now?" Eddie laughed. "Are you ready to order or what, dude?"

A quick glance around the table confirmed that everyone was looking at him, with expressions that were varying degrees of concerned or entertained. He grabbed at a laminated menu sitting at his elbow.

"Sorry. I, uh. Just remembered some stuff. Funny what sets it off."

"Right?!" said Bill enthusiastically, and then he launched into talking about how one of the fish in the tanks behind them had triggered a memory from third grade or something. He didn't stutter once, Richie noted, feeling pleased for him.

Richie stepped back from the spotlight with relief and held his menu up in front of his face, waiting for the words on it to start making sense.

"What was it?"

He looked over at Eddie, who was leaning towards him over his crossed arms, elbows on the table.

"What did you remember?" Eds prompted.

He decided he was going to lie about it, and then opened his mouth and said, "Just this one time when you were sleeping over at my house and we got girl-drunk off some shit I stole out of my parents' liquor cabinet."

Eddie snorted.

"Do you remember that too?" Richie asked, his heart starting to race.

"Not ringing any bells," said Eddie, to his relief and disappointment. "Definitely sounds like something you'd do though. Was it just you and me there, or Bill too?"

"Uh, excuse you, you didn't need any convincing to join in, except you were pissed that I didn't think to provide you with fucking glassware to drink it out of," Richie laughed. "And no, it was just you and me. I don't remember where Bill was. Probably babysitting his little brother." Richie couldn't remember that kid's name.

"Sure, Jan. So what were we drinking? Something shitty? It was, wasn't it?"

"It was… shitty as hell," Richie confirmed.

Eddie barked out a laugh. "Classic. That's a rite of passage, isn't it? Getting sick off some ancient, nasty booze you swiped off your parents?"

"I guess so, dude," Richie laughed. "Fuck knows how long it'd been sitting in the back of that liquor cabinet. The bottle was dusty as hell. At least my folks didn't miss it."

And like, what were the odds that Eddie would ever remember that night anyway? Were they all going to regain photographic memories of their childhoods after mysteriously losing it all? Not fucking likely.

Another full shot glass of whiskey appeared in front of Richie then, and some food, and some beers, and everybody regressed back to their eighth grade selves and picked on everybody else for a good hour (although he _may_ have been bagging on Eds at an above-average rate, not that he could stop himself if he tried). By the time Eddie convinced him to arm-wrestle for some unclear reason (didn't matter why, Richie won), he felt more relaxed than he had in years and was also starting to think he might need to walk back to the hotel. Or find out if Uber had come to Derry yet.

He let his guard down so far--these were his closest friends, he could tell them stuff about himself if he wanted to--that he actually felt safe enough to admit to the panic attack he'd had when Mike had called, which, looking back, was such a ridiculous reaction to have that it was actually kinda funny. Almost as funny as Eddie admitting that he'd crashed his fucking car. Nobody but Eduardo would walk in the door announcing that he was allergic to every kind of food there was, but then wait _an hour and a half_ for the subject to come up before bothering to mention that he'd been in a car accident the day before.

And then Bev said, "Pennywise," and nothing that came after that was funny at all.

***

Nobody really slept that night. They just sat vigil in the bar downstairs. Richie had made a solid attempt at around 2 AM to put himself to bed, and had gotten up again at 3:30 after about 20 minutes of sleep and some night terrors.

Now the sky they could see through the downstairs windows was getting lighter, but he was still pretty alert, able to think coherently, all that. "Fuck," he said to the ceiling, slouching down in the leather tub chair he'd set up camp in, "who needs sleep when you have adrenaline, right?"

"Cortisol," said Eddie.

"Gesundheit."

"Not your best work, dude," said Eddie mercilessly. "But, cortisol. That's the one you get jacked full of when you're terrified."

"Today I learned," said Richie, spreading his hands and slouching even more in his chair. It was a good chair. He should get one of these, if he lived long enough to buy one.

"Life is a learning journey," said Eddie.

"Ugh."

Bill, probably tired of listening to them, changed the subject. "So does everyb-body p-p-pretty much remember everything now?"

"Yeah, I guess," Richie mused. "Or the new revelations are coming slower and slower now, anyway. I haven't had a 'holy fuck' moment in like," he looked at Eddie's watch, visible on the wrist dangling over the arm of his own chair, "five hours."

"Same here," said Eddie. Richie froze and shot him a sideways look, but Eddie's tired face and lazy posture weren't giving anything away.

"And thank god for that," Bev chimed in, pinching the bridge of her nose. "I think my brain's at max capacity."

"Wait," said Richie to Eddie, leaning in, voice hushed. "You remember everything now?"

Eddie shrugged. "I mean, basically? There's no more big gaps of 'who the fuck knows?' at least. If there's anything else I'm forgetting," he said, and turned his face toward Richie, "I can't remember it."

"Funny," said Richie, nodding. "Yeah, really good. Good work there."

"Thanks," said Eddie. "Let me know if you need any new writers for your act. I could branch out."

"Jesus Christ," Richie pleaded to the ceiling.

"Just 'Eddie' is fine, man." Eddie levered himself out of his chair.

"Eddie Spaghetti," Richie called after him sweetly, earning himself a middle-fingered salute as Eddie walked away. "Where are you going?"

Eddie pointed at the bar, which Mike was leaning on the near side of, nursing a glass of water. "I'm pretty sure alcohol will fix it."

"Fix what?"

"We're gonna find out!" And Eddie started sorting through all the bottles behind the bar.

Richie shook his head. "So, whoever the fuck is running this hotel these days, they're, uh, pretty laid-back, huh?"

Bill laughed. "S-saves on s-s-s-staff costs," he bit out, and Richie snorted.

Eddie was whistling now, like an asshole, and Richie looked back over at the bar, then did a double-take. Eddie wasn't there. Richie sat up in his chair, heart starting to pound because he could still hear the whistling.

Then he saw the top of Eddie's head for a second, before it ducked out of sight behind the bar counter again. The motherfucker was crouched on the floor, doing something on the lower shelves.

"What are you even looking for?" he called over. "Your dignity isn't down there! You never had any!"

"I was looking for some talent for you," Eddie called back, "but they don't have any of that either!"

Bill very politely put his hand in front of his mouth to mask the deeply amused smile there.

Richie opened his mouth to lob another insult back, but just then one of Eddie's hands emerged from behind the bar counter and set down a bottle on it. It was a bottle of butter ripple schnapps, and Richie forgot whatever it was he was going to say, because he'd never told Eddie exactly what the fuck they'd been drinking that one night.

It might have been a coincidence. It was probably a coincidence. But Eddie was exactly the kind of asshole who'd do that intentionally, too.

When Eddie emerged from behind the bar five minutes later with a drink in hand, the schnapps was still sitting on the counter. Richie did his best not to look at it.

***

"Richie!"

Richie looked around his room wildly, both hands dug deep into his hair. He dimly noticed that he was repeating an endless litany of "Fuck fuck fuck fuck" under his breath and wondered when that had started.

"Rich!" Ben knocked on the door. Ben had a cop-knock, and Richie jumped out of his skin a little at the noise.

"Richie, come on man," Ben pleaded through the door. "Just let me in, let's talk it out, all right? You looked pretty freaked out when you came in."

"Toothbrush," Richie muttered to himself, grabbing the handle of his duffel bag and hauling it into the bathroom. Faced with his toiletries all around the sink, he chewed his lip for a second and then just swept it all into the bag with one arm.

"Richie," said Ben from much closer. Apparently he'd finally tried the doorknob and discovered Richie hadn't bothered to lock it.

Richie looked over his shoulder. Ben was in the bathroom doorway, leaning on the frame and giving him some top-shelf sad puppy eyes. He looked away and grabbed up his shaving cream from where he'd knocked it into the sink. "I already told you, I'm fucking leaving," he said through his teeth, moving to the bathtub to grab everything else.

"Yeah, I heard," said Ben, backing out of the doorway for him and trailing after as he threw the duffel bag back on his hotel bed. "I also heard you say we're all going to die anyway."

"Great." Richie stooped to grab a stray sock off the floor. "Glad you heard me so clearly. Guess there's nothing left to discuss, then." He had no idea where this sock's mate was. He balled it up and threw it in the bag; he had bigger problems.

"Rich, this isn't like you."

Richie huffed a laugh. "Obviously there's some shit you're still not remembering, then." He ducked around Ben--giant, beautiful, pain in the ass Ben--to retrieve a shirt off the back of a chair.

"Okay, clearly that clown got in your head," said Ben, carrying on a conversation by himself. "Do you want to tell me about it?"

"Nope!" His night guard, glasses case and trazodone were in the nightstand drawer; he ducked back around Ben again and tossed the shirt at his bag.

"I really think you should talk to _somebody_ , Rich. You look… not good," Ben finished lamely.

The choice of words brought his racing thoughts to a screeching halt. He grabbed his pill bottle out of the nightstand and looked down at it in his hand for a moment, as if he were reading the label instead of just staring right through it and seeing nothing.

"Listen, Ben," he said. He slammed the drawer shut with his knee, and clutched his pill bottle tightly in his hand as he stared at the wall sconce in front of him. "I might seem like I share a lot, but really I just talk a lot. You don't actually know that much about me." He calmly approached his bag and dumped the rest of his things inside it, zipping it shut with probably more violence than necessary. "I'm what you might call a 'closed book'."

"I get that man, I do," said Ben, doing placating things with his hands at him. Then he demonstrated his complete lack of understanding by taking a step closer to Richie, apparently thinking that the calm, measured voice and completely flat affect meant 'please approach me, and if you touch me you most definitely will _not_ lose that hand'.

Richie's hand snaked out and snatched his bag off the bed, and he started weighing his odds at getting out of the room by going over the mattress instead of trying to go through Ben.

Ben stopped dead. "Fuck," he said, "sorry." He raised his hands slowly up in front of him, palms out, and shifted his stance until he didn't seem to be looming anymore. He had definitely learned that shit from a book.

Maybe Richie could go through him after all.

But Ben was talking again. "I know how it feels to hide yourself from people all the time, Rich, that's all I'm saying. I know what it's like to have a big secret you want to hide at all costs."

Oh, _fuck this_. He wanted to scream. "You mean how you've been in love with Bev since, like, the day you met her? That secret?"

It was probably cruel--okay, it was definitely cruel--but he took a vicious satisfaction in watching Ben go pale.

"You knew?" Ben croaked.

Richie nodded. "Yeah, dude. It's always been kinda obvious. Stan and I actually had a bet going on how long you'd take to finally tell her. Which I've now won, not that I'll get to collect." He was just twisting the knife now. Playing with his food. And he didn't give a shit. Stan would have been disappointed in him, but Stan had disappointed him first by fucking dying, so. Disappointment all around.

"St--who else knew?"

Richie rubbed behind his ear where the arm of his glasses always dug in, considering the question. "Well, definitely not Bev. If that helps. Although if she's read any of Bill's books, she should have realized by now that he wasn't the one writing her fucking poetry." He looked back at Ben and saw him looking down at the floor, shoulders rounded in defeat. A twinge of guilt flared up; he pushed it down viciously.

"So, uh, great catching up with you," he said, shouldering his bag. "I'm gonna get the fuck out of here as fast as possible now."

He actually had his hand on the doorknob, he was almost out of there, and then Ben said, "Eddie."

Richie looked down at his hand, wrapped around the doorknob so tightly his knuckles were white. He tipped forward slowly until his forehead was pressed against the door. "What about him?" he asked, hearing his voice come out flat, flat, flat. It sounded like someone else's voice, in a way it never did when he was doing an impression.

"I've got Bev," Ben said quietly, "and you"-- _no no no no no don't say it don't fucking say it_ \--"have Eddie."

Richie closed his eyes and felt the wood grain of the door against his skin as he pressed his forehead harder into it, hoping it would ground him. If nothing else, it was going to leave a mark on his face. "What do you mean I 'have' Eddie?" he asked dully. "Nobody 'has' Eddie. That would be like 'having' a armful of rabid badgers."

"Cut the shit for once and just talk to me," said Ben, sounding tired. "I wasn't even going to say anything. You know that? I thought I was going to take that knowledge to my grave." He heard the sound of Ben's footsteps approaching. "But if you want to fight dirty, Rich, then this time I'm happy to oblige you. Because this shit is serious. And it's bigger than us, and our fucking… insecurities. I know it. And you know it. How many more children is It going to kill if we don't stop this?"

Richie took a long, deep breath in, counted to five, and released it. "Your crush on a pretty girl we used to hang out with is not the same as this." He picked his head up away from the door to face Ben, red forehead-mark, puffy eyes and all. "Your quiet, still-the-fat-kid pining over the socially acceptable object of your _fucking_ affections is not," he smiled, "on the same level as my 'insecurities'." He let his bag fall off his shoulder after making the air-quotes, ignored it when it hit the floor with a thud. "We are not the same, and I want to punch you in the face _so badly_ right now. Do you understand that? Benjamin? Huh? Do you?" He was advancing slowly on Ben as he spoke, and Ben was starting to back away just as slowly. "Do you know how _that_ feels? Why don't you fucking tell me all about it? I've got some time. Haven't been horribly murdered yet. Room seems clear for now."

Ben, apparently remembering that he was actually the biggest person in the room, stopped backing away and held his ground, even raising his chin a little. "Richie," he said, very kindly, and Richie's right hand clenched into a fist, "it isn't 1989 anymore. You can leave this shitty town anytime you want now."

"I was actually just trying to do that," said Richie, pointing a thumb back over his shoulder, "but you stopped me and said I can't."

"What I mean is, the world you live in now is not the world you grew up in. You can choose your own life, go where you want, spend your time with the people you want to see."

"Ah," Richie nodded. "Right. 'It Gets Better', is that what you're trying to say?"

Ben huffed. "Look. You want to keep the Eddie part of things to yourself, I understand that. You're right, you telling Eddie how you feel doesn't carry the same risks as me confessing my feelings to Bev. My only problem is me, and I should solve it. I'm not the fat kid or the new kid anymore. And _you_ aren't a scrawny little kid always looking over your shoulder for the Bowers gang anymore."

Richie shuffled his feet. "I--"

Ben rode right over him. "So the Eddie thing doesn't ever have to leave this room. But you _should_ stop trying to hide the fact that you're gay. Or whatever. From us. We're your friends, Richie. Fuck that, we're your family. What are you so scared is going to happen if you share that part of yourself with some people you actually trust? What, you--you think Bill is going to reject you? You think Eddie's gonna call you a homo?" Ben paused. "Actually, Eddie might do that, but I know it would come from a place of love."

That startled a laugh out of Richie. A surprisingly wet-sounding laugh. He pulled his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. "Nah, he'd say some shit about how clearly I couldn't have been fucking his mom all those years."

"Yeah, you'd basically be gift-wrapping that one for him," agreed Ben. "But you should do it. Because that's how Pennywise got in your head, isn't it? What power is It going to have left over you if you let go of this secret?"

Richie was suddenly pretty sure that he knew how It had appeared to Ben. "I dunno. I'm still pretty afraid of clowns. Also dying. And now fortune cookies, that's a new one." He cleared his throat. "How did you know?"

Ben shrugged. "What else would the clown have over you? Aside from this, you're pretty much shameless. You own everything else about yourself."

Richie frowned at that but was having trouble refuting it. "No, I meant--how did you figure out I was gay? Or about Eddie?"

"Oh. Well, I was the quiet, fat, new kid. I worked on being invisible most of the time, so I'd just stand back and watch people a lot. You learn all kinds of things from doing that."

"Huh," Richie mused, nodding to himself. "That's fucking weird, dude."

Ben just shrugged again. "So will you stay? Help us kill It?"

He sighed. "Yeah, man. I guess."

Ben yanked him into a hug, so he returned it. "I'm glad, Rich," he said when they separated again. "I'll see you downstairs, okay?"

"You bet," said Richie, waving as Ben left the room.

Once he heard the creak of Ben heading down the stairs, he counted to 20 silently in his head and then picked up his bag and went out the upstairs fire exit.

Ben had never been great at understanding that some things were much easier said than done. As an architect though, he probably should have remembered that buildings have multiple exits.

***

Stan's--ghost, shade, echo, his fucking… _memory_ \--had more balls than Stan the Man had ever had (outside of that incredible five minutes at his own bar mitzvah), for making Richie feel guilty about trying to get the fuck out of Derry and back to his life.

"You never even came _back_ , you dick," he muttered to himself as he stomped up the library steps. "And I knew you'd be disappointed about the Ben thing, you didn't need to rub it in. I'm still the most disappointed one, you dead fucking pussy."

He was fixating on it, he knew he was, and it was just making him angrier and angrier and this wasn't going to stop until he did something reckless, or lost his temper in an epic way.

When he walked in the main room of the library and saw Bowers, of all people, trying to put a knife through Mike's eye, he didn't even slow down as he walked up to the open display case (Why would you leave actual weapons in an open display case, Mike? In _Derry_?) and grabbed the hatchet out of it.

He had to admit, as he tried to clean the puke off his mouth with his shirt afterwards, that he'd never come out of a rage spiral quicker than that. And hey, something new to have nightmares about besides clowns! Was this the 'mindfulness' shit his last therapist was always talking about?

His brain was feeling a bit disconnected from his body, though, and he guessed he might be seriously shaken up over killing Bowers. That was probably why, when Ben ran into the room and said, "Are you alright?", he actually _did_ say, "No, I'm not alright! I just fucking killed a guy!"

Ben looked as stunned by that burst of sincerity as Richie felt, so there was something they could have in common.

When he found out how--and when--Eddie had gotten that bandage on his cheek, though, all he wanted to do was kill Bowers a second time.

"I appreciate the thought, dude," said Eddie. "I know you were actually defending Mike, but I'm not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth."

"Don't sell yourself short, Eds," Richie said, looking at the stab wound Eddie had put in Bowers' front; that had to have hit at least a lung, what the fuck. Bowers had been a zombie. He'd hatcheted a zombie, not a psychopath. He looked back over at Eddie instead, turning away from Bowers. "You fucking pulled a knife out of your _own face_ and then immediately stabbed him in the chest with it. That's pretty fucking metal."

"I guess you're right," said Eddie. "Speaking of metal, though, all I can taste is pennies." He grabbed a garbage can from behind the librarian's desk and spat a pink blob into it. "Gross," he added weakly.

"How would you know what a penny tastes like? As if you'd ever put a penny in your mouth." Richie looked at the spreading red patch on his cheek bandage. "Want me to stitch it up?" he asked.

"Nope," said Eddie immediately, shaking his head. "Uh-uh, no I do not."

"I could totally do it," Richie said. "I know how."

"Where the fuck did you learn how to do stitches?" Eddie asked in alarm.

Richie shrugged. "Youtube. Looked pretty easy." He pulled out his phone. "I can find the video again, do a step-by-step thing," he offered.

Eddie took a long step back from him. "Do not fucking touch me, asswipe."

"And if I listened to shit like that, you wouldn't have a usable right arm."

"You got lucky," Eddie snapped, probably not noticing how he was cradling his arm defensively now.

"So did you," Richie pointed out. "Lucky _I was there_."

"Oh my god," said Eddie. "Fine. Thank you, Richie, for setting my arm that one time when we almost got murdered by a demon clown anyway. I admit that you somehow managed to do it more or less correctly, probably by accident. Thank you also for _not_ stitching up the stab-hole in my cheek, because I would rather have it _heal as a fucking hole_ than let you near my face with a sharp needle. I'll go to the ER when we're done with this bullshit."

Richie chuckled. "I'll take you."

"Fucking right, you will," said Eddie.

Richie felt a warm feeling in his chest, which he was pretty sure had nothing to do with shock. He opened his mouth to respond but was interrupted by Mike's phone ringing.

"It's Bill," said Mike, and Richie got a sinking feeling.

***

Richie stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jacket, looked up at the batshit-fucking-creepy eaves of the murder clown crack house, and recognized that this was probably his last chance to say something, if he was going to take Ben's extremely dubious advice after all.

Eddie even asked if anybody wanted to say something before they went in. Just handed him that opportunity on a silver platter. And he said nothing.

And then Bill gave him yet another chance to say it, point-blank put him on the spot, at which point he assumed it was either Pennywise or the Ghost of Stanley Past actively fucking with him. He considered it. He considered just opening his mouth and saying "I'm gay" instead of whatever accidentally motivational thing Bill was trying to coax out of him. But he didn't.

After the Spider-Stan almost chewed his face off and he was lying there on the disease-ridden floor with his head in Bev's lap, he shakily wiped the demon-slobber off of his face and reflected that the metaphors were getting a little bit too on-the-nose for his taste. He could have said it then, too, while Bev petted his hair and everybody else crowded around him anxiously.

He actually had way too many opportunities to say it, each moment taunting him as it passed, right up until he found himself crouched behind a rock in the murder clown demon nest, watching blood dribble down Eddie's chin and turn what was left of his white shirt red.

He probably should have told Eddie, while they were sitting there in their own quiet, sad bubble. He couldn't figure out if Eddie remembered kissing him or not. The schnapps bottle was torturing him. Eddie hadn't been giving him any hints otherwise, the fucking asshole.

Now wasn't the time for any of that. They needed to focus on getting Eddie out of here, the long journey back up to the street ahead of them. Needed to get the hole in Eddie's cheek stitched up alongside the hole in his chest. His shit could wait, he decided firmly, and then Eddie patted weakly at his arm.

Once he was sure he had Richie's attention, he coughed, "Richie. I need to tell you something." He curled his fingers weakly, beckoning.

Richie leaned in close immediately. "What? What is it, buddy?"

Eddie caught his gaze, looked him right in the eyes, and said, "I fucked your mom."

He remembered.

Richie stared as Eddie broke into a hoarse, quiet laugh.

He fucking remembered, all right.

Richie looked up at the cave ceiling and blinked wetly for a second, and then he looked back down at Eddie and said, "You're a dick."

Eddie nodded and smiled. He grabbed hold of Richie's hand and ran his thumb lightly over Richie's knuckles, and Richie swallowed back some tears.

As last words went, the two of them could have done much worse.

************

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...And when they said "I fucked your mom", what they really meant was "I love you".
> 
> The second chapter is self-indulgent bullshit you can skip if you want--I really wanted to write about Richie having to go back to doing shows way too soon after All Those Things Happened and just having a prolonged and maybe-therapeutic breakdown onstage, with punchlines, and just burning his career/image to the ground and starting over fresh, all because he had to avoid breaching a contract. I've definitely seen some similarly-themed stand-up fics, but nobody was dead in those ones, so where's the fun in that? So anyway, I wrote him an unrehearsed, stream of consciousness stand-up set. Think like Tig Notaro's show after her cancer diagnosis, but less good, and more manic.
> 
> Also, you don't even know how close I came to titling this thing with a really bad Rocky Horror reference (the actual title is a reference to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof).


	2. Richie Tozier: Beep-Beep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You must be out of your fucking mind," said Richie. "I took bereavement leave! I'm bereaved! And fucked up!"
> 
> "Yeah, I know," said his agent, "and before you were bereaved you were just fucked up, and now because of that, we have to deal with a show in Chicago that was cancelled after it already started, while also trying not to default on your Netflix deal."
> 
> "How much will it cost to make them just go away?"
> 
> "That depends. Do you still want to be a comic?"
> 
> "Well, _that's_ a loaded question."
> 
> "Financially, you might-- _might_ \--be able to afford it. Career-wise, it will break you. You'll be an ex-comic. So, do you want me to call your lawyer and find out how we might be able to breach your contract without losing a kidney in the process?"
> 
> "Fuck. No. No, I don't."
> 
> "Okay, then you need to be in Minneapolis next Wednesday."
> 
> "This is going to be a trainwreck. You know that, right?"
> 
> "Will it be an entertaining trainwreck? Because I did just reread your Netflix agreement quite extensively, and it says the set has to be 60 minutes long, not that it has to be good. Do you get what I'm saying?"
> 
> "Yeah, I get what you're saying."
> 
> "Great. Break a leg."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is somewhere between a coda and a companion piece to the first chapter. I actually wrote this part first?

Is there anything sadder than this: having a big gay epiphany when you’re 26 years old, in some wood-panelled dive bar at like, 2:30 on a Thursday morning on a bender with some other fucking comics whose names you won’t remember in a year, right after bombing three nights in a row at some club in Iowa called, like, _The Laugh Pit_ or some shit like that. And then immediately, even in your alcohol-pickled, drug-addled, stupid fucking 26-year-old brain, recognizing, “Well _that’s_ not gonna fucking fly,” and clearly the only thing you can do is just push it all down, bury it, lock it up and throw away the key, because it’s 2002 and you’re just barely getting by as a comic as it is, and you don’t have the credits, or the talent, to change your act from the straight-dude-my-girlfriend’s-nuts-thank-fuck-she’s-hot fucking _douchebag_ material that’s finally been getting you work. Literally faced with the incompatible choice between being who you are as a person and paying your rent, mostly because you don’t think you can go back to school and start all over again.

Is there anything sadder than that?

Yes. There is. And it’s realizing one day, 15 years after you finished having your gay panic and then shoved yourself in the closet, boarded the door shut, and built a whole stand-up career on pretending to be a dude who would ever want to date a woman, that you already _had_ a fucking gay panic when you were twelve, but you _forgot it happened_ before you could pick a more sensible career than being a comic. And then, while you’re 40 fucking years old and this realization has drop-kicked you right into your third gay panic of your life--which is at least two more than anyone is supposed to have, by the way--some asshole sticks a microphone in your hand and shoves you on a stage in front of hundreds of people who paid to hear you tell stupid jokes about your imaginary girlfriend.

Can it get worse? Probably! This is an hour-long set.

And I know what you’re asking yourself right now. You’re asking “Who the fuck just forgets that they’re gay? Isn’t that something you fucking remember? How do you forget a thing like being queer?”

If you haven’t figured out the answer to the first one of those questions yet--and that’s fine, because it’s not like I have a reputation for doing subtle comedy, you’re probably my target audience--the answer is me. I fucking forgot. And now I remember that this is how I spent my preteen years as well as my 20s. And since my last show went so… what was that, three weeks ago now? That was only three weeks ago?! Fuck. Since I’ve already made it further into this set than I did the last one, I’m gonna lay it out for anyone who’s still getting up to speed: the next fucking 55 minutes remaining of this show are not going to be about my imaginary girlfriend and whatever other absolute bullshit I used to talk about. I can’t even remember any of it anymore. It’s all been driven out of my head. If that’s what you came for, it’s not too late to leave and go catch a movie or something instead.

For the rest of you, you’re getting exactly what the fuck we all know you really came here tonight to see: the follow-up to my nervous breakdown. You’re in luck; it’s going to get heavy and weird. So settle in, buckle up, and come on a journey with me, into my mid-life crisis currently in progress.

> _Richie paused and turned his back on the room to take a long drink of water. He kept the bottle held up in front of his face as he tried to breathe steadily, pretending he couldn’t see the desperate beckoning of his manager from the wings and training his ears on the audience white noise he usually couldn’t hear at all: coughing, rustling, murmurs. There was a lot of shuffling and soft chatter. He heard the distant creaks of the exit doors and closed his eyes for one beat, two, three, before taking one last sip of water, blowing a kiss into the wings, and turning back around to face the crowd. It hadn’t thinned out much._

No good movies playing tonight for the rest of you? Nothing on TV that’s more interesting than what’s about to happen here? You voyeuristic fucks. My kind of people.

So three weeks ago, I walked onstage for a show in Chicago and set a speed record in professional comedy for shitting the bed. I didn't even make it through the setup of my first joke. It was a full fucking house. I was supposed to be taping a Netflix special. Matter of fact, they hauled me back in here tonight to try again to tape that special, so either we’re gonna air this or they’re gonna cancel it. I warned them, just like I’ve now warned all of you, that it’s going to end badly, but that’s okay. It can still be my fault. I can take that responsibility for us all, because it’s one of the least interesting problems I’ve had this month.

Less than ten minutes before I went on in Chicago and then couldn’t remember my own name, I got a phone call. By the time I hung up the phone, I had gone out the stage door so I could projectile vomit over the balcony railing. Now, it’s Chicago, so there’s an 85% chance I hit a pigeon, but I honestly couldn’t see that far to confirm so we’ll all have to live with the mystery. I vomited another like three times in the week that followed, but never with that kind of form or precision. If I did actually hit a bird with my puke-jet, then it was easily a top-five in my personal leaderboard.

Now, for all you straights in the audience tonight, this wasn’t the gay panic I mentioned earlier, all right? The closeted homos in the crowd will know what I’m talking about. Relax, you don’t need to identify yourselves. You know who you are, and I know you’re here. I doubt somehow that there’s any out-and-proud queers paying for tickets to a Richie Tozier show.

> _Some isolated whistles came from the crowd. Richie did a double-take and then squinted out into the dark audience._

Jesus! Really? Why? You just wanna report back to Twitter about all the homophobic jokes in my regular set? I hope you’re at least being paid for that. “Went to the Richie Tozier show tonight, he’s still a fucking knob who keeps telling that Masturbators’ Anonymous joke, I fell asleep four times,” send tweet. God, that’s like the Arts & Culture version of the traffic report. The most unsexy beat in social media pseudo-journalism. The-the weatherman, but the one who works when there’s no hurricane coming to fuck up some southeastern state with no infrastructure.

> _Amid one of the stronger laughs of the set so far, a voice from the crowd shouted out, “You look like a daddy!” Richie snorted in surprise and then dissolved into semi-hysterical giggles for a second, leaning over his knees and letting the mic go slack in his hand as he covered his face with his free hand, wiping tears out of his eyes and trying to regain his composure enough to speak again._

Y-you--I look like a _daddy_? Is that all it fucking takes? I am honestly concerned for your taste. I am. Congrats to the Twitter weather reporters in the audience tonight, though, because now you get to live-tweet Hurricane Trauma as it lays waste to my entire fucking career. It’s your big break. “Richie Tozier, established human disaster, started off a super fucking weird and unfunny show, probably the last one he’ll ever do, by coming out to 400 audience members as a _gay_ disaster and telling everyone they should leave while they still could. I fell asleep four times,” send tweet.

Where the fuck was I? Projectile vomiting in Chicago. Right. That was a panic attack. But not a _gay_ panic. That happened later. Now, something you well-adjusted people probably won’t realize is that there are different varieties, different flavours, of panic. It’s not some a la carte thing. You build your own panic. We all have our own go-to preferences for personal meltdowns, but each panic is a custom-created miserable experience. And I am the motherfucking Gordon Ramsay of losing my grip on reality.

Until three weeks ago, I thought this was a natural gift, maybe stemming from my being a deeply closeted disaster who picked stand-up as my career like two decades before we admitted that gay comics exist, but then I got a phone call from back home, puked my guts out, and suddenly remembered my childhood, and now I know the truth. I was not born with the tools to create 31 flavours of losing my fucking mind. No! I was molded, shaped by the pressures of time, into the twisted mess of a human being standing before you.

Anybody here got PTSD? Yeah? Cheer quietly, loud noises are bad. Yes. Okay. You should probably have left the show earlier when it was convenient, with the-the Chads and the Taylors and the homophobes, so, sorry. Anyway. Did you know that trauma can give you memory loss? You did, sir? I didn’t! Or if I did know, then I forgot. But that’s not a memory that came ripping back along with everything else from before the age of 18 once I got that phone call, so fuck it, we’re chalking it up as new information from the new therapist that I absolutely have now. He is going to shit a brick when he hears I did this show.

So anyway, phone call, vomit, nervous breakdown on stage--the memories of the first 18 years of my life started coming back before I hung up the phone, never really stopped piling up in my brain all the way through my pitiful attempt to tell my little jokes that night, and they kept on coming thick and fast all through my escape from the theatre, taxi to my hotel, grabbing my tour duffel bag and then Ubering to O’Hare Airport so I could immediately fly standby to rural Maine.

Your next question, I can hear you screaming it internally: “Why the fuck would you go to rural Maine, Richie?”

I grew up there.

“That’s nice, Richie. Again, why the fuck would you go to rural Maine?”

Fair question. The answer is in the phone call. The phone call came from my friend Mike, whom I had not seen nor heard from in 27 years, and I had also forgotten he existed. I forgot all my childhood friends existed. And based on my adulthood experiences, until that phone call I was operating on the assumption I just never fucking had any childhood friends. I thought it checked out.

But I did. I had six friends. We were all friends, everybody with everybody else, and when you have more than three kids under the age of 15 who are all friends with each other, obviously what you do is you give yourselves a group name and membership perks. It’s the VIP package of childhood friendship. Or it’s a gang.

My friends and I called ourselves the Losers Club. Clearly we were not a gang. If you want to be a gang, your friend group needs to be named after your sociopathic leader, or the place where you hang out. Gang names are about where you are and who’s in charge. If you don’t meet those criteria, you’re just a cluster of nerds.

So that’s what we were. Cluster of nerds. The 18th string squad of a boy band lineup. There was Mike, the responsible one; Bill, our moral compass; Stan, the brains of the operation; Ben, who did double duty as the fat kid and the new kid, but don’t worry, he grew up and got hot, fairytale ending; E-Eddie, the hypochondriac and team medic; Bev, the girl and also the muscle; and me. The loud asshole.

> _That got enough of a laugh that Richie took a moment to quietly regroup, clearing his throat that had tried to betray him by squeezing too tightly around Eddie’s name. He took a deep breath in through his nose, moved the microphone cord out of his way and closed his eyes for just a beat to center himself before he tried to pick up his train of thought again._

The first thing I remembered when I heard Mike’s voice on the phone was Mike’s face, which is beautiful and was not what made me puke. Never. The second thing I remembered was my top five nicknames for him; number one was ‘Micycle’. The third thing I remembered wasn’t about Mike at all, it was about our hometown. It was a smell. The smell of the canal in late August, right in the sweet spot between the fucking algal soup that cooked away in it all summer in the heat, and the fall’s addition of moldy dead leaves into the mix. _That_ was about 75% of what made me bring up my dinner as pigeon target practice. Haven’t been able to forget the smell since. Kind of need to stop talking about it right now before I start smelling it in here and puke all over the front row; hi guys. Enjoying the show?

Dearest Micycle was the only one of the Losers to stay in our hometown, because he is insane, and he called me that day to give me some terrible fucking news: I needed to go back to Derry, we all did, he wasn’t taking no for an answer, yes Richie today, not next week or next year, no excuses. We had some unfinished business to take care of, and it was time to do that. That news was the other 25% of the reason I threw up.

So I went. I remembered three of the Losers by the time my plane landed in Maine, and I remembered the other three by the time we all met at this one _deeply_ mediocre Chinese restaurant in town, that was built sometime after I’d left. And by the time we got to the fortune cookies at the end, which I will never again eat as long as I live, I could remember every technicolour detail of my childhood spent with those people.

And, you know, I honestly had the most terrible time of my entire life on that trip back home. Shit happened that I cannot tell you about, because you won’t believe me and also I might get arrested or something when I walk out of this theatre, I really don’t know. Don’t wanna find out. Seems like a bad idea. I had the worst time. But when life hands you trauma, you gotta make trauma-nade, or whatever, right? Yeah. Inspirational shit. So I’m going to have emotional scars and horrific nightmares forever, but I also got my memory back. And that caused more emotional scars, because I can remember puberty now. But I also remember where I came from. I now know what made me into the gay disaster I am today. And I would have preferred like, a pile of money or some attractive indentured servants or something, obviously, as my silver lining to the past three weeks, but I’m a stand-up comic. I need this joke goldmine of my fucked up life that was missing before. And now I can share some of this bounty with you here tonight. And I might still run off the stage crying. That’s still on the table. Have hope.

Who’s sitting here now, trying to imagine what I was like as a kid? Most of you; that’s what I thought. Thank you for the attention, I need it like air. Listen: whatever you’re picturing right now? Almost definitely correct. Looks-wise, the only real difference between me now and me at age 12 was that I didn’t look like I desperately needed a shave back then, no matter how much I wanted that, which was a lot. Everything else is the same, just larger scale. Except my glasses. But including my buck teeth. And my dick.

That was a lot of surprised-sounding laughter. Do you know whose comedy show you’re at? Everything else I’ve ever told you about myself before tonight might have been a lie, but the dick jokes, and the mom jokes, those have always come from a place of honesty. My dick, your mom, those are me. They’re in my heart. But in the interests of full disclosure, since I’m getting all these secrets off my chest I have something else to confess: I also fucked your dad. I’m glad we could get that out in the open. It’s been bothering me. And so has your dad. Tell him to stop calling me.

My childhood! My childhood. What happened to make me into the sad, hairy blob-man you see before you? All you really need to know about the life and times of Richie Tozier is this. It’s like, three things. The first thing you need to know about me is that I had a dozen nicknames in heavy rotation for every single one of my friends, especially Stan and Eddie, who were my two best friends. Staniel, Stan the Man, Stangela, Stan and Deliver, fucking, Stan by Me, and then Eddie was Eds--fuck, he _hated_ that one, so I used it all the time--Eddie Spaghetti, Eduardo, Eddielicious, Edwina, he was Dr. K every time he gave us a lecture on tetanus or we needed a band-aid, Mr. Ed, because I have never been ashamed to go for the low-hanging fruit, including your mom. And your dad. What else? Oh! Right Said Ed, that was a good one. Just some real top-shelf material there. And in return, in return for all those names, my friends bestowed upon me one, single nickname, which stuck instantly and forever: Trashmouth.

> _The crowd exploded for the first time in the set, which he’d kind of expected. Richie took a drink of water and let his gaze slide past his manager, who was still lurking in the wings with his arms crossed, but looking less like he was going to bring out the thing to hook Richie around the neck and pull him offstage like a cartoon character. For now._

Yes, thank you. Thanks. Yes, these people with whom I once spent all my waking hours had my number so thoroughly, so completely, that even before our balls dropped they had _branded_ me with this nickname at like, a spiritual level. I left that town, I left _everything_ behind me there. I forgot all my friends ever _existed_! I forgot _the name of the town_! Okay? Didn’t matter. I’m 40 fucking years old, I’m still Trashmouth. My legacy! It’s a killing word. But it only works on me, not other people. I walk through life, everyone I meet knows me immediately for who I am: a sentient dumpster. I’m pretty sure that’s going to be the only identifying name on my tombstone. “Here lies Trashmouth, 1976 to 2021, he honestly lived longer than we expected him to.” And we have these six people to thank for that.

Number two. The second thing you need to know to understand who I am as a person, like inherently, is there’s a signal word the Losers Club uses--used when we were kids, used it three weeks ago when I met up with them for the first time in 27 years, is still using it in the group chat we’re all in now, probably used it on me this afternoon, I already can’t remember--and it was created specifically to inform me that I’ve crossed a line and need to shut the fuck up. Because “shut the fuck up, Richie,” six syllables, needed to be trimmed down. They needed an efficiency! That’s how often--none of you seem to be surprised--that’s how often they needed to say that shit to me. Handling me and my bullshit required a shorthand for “shut the fuck up”. And the magic word, their social safeword if you will, was “Beep-beep”.

“Beep-beep.” That’s what they went with. Bill and Stan came up with that shit when we were like, eleven. That was when I really got into my prime of being an insufferable mouthpiece. All my friends used it, they all did. Even my parents used it sometimes. I never went a week without hearing “Beep-beep, Richie” at least once. Or if I was being really disgusting, I’d get a “Beep-beep, _Trashmouth_ ”. It turned into my conversational e-brake. It was like some Pavlov shit--he rang a bell, the dog drooled. I hear “Beep-beep, Richie”, my mouth snaps shut. For like four, five seconds. But that was all you ever really needed to derail a particularly inspired dick joke or mom joke, because I have less attention span and focus than a housefly.

The third thing you need to know about me has to do with that gay crisis I had at age 12. The one I forgot about, so I had to have another one in my 20s to get back up to speed. Specifically, you need to know what triggered it.

> _Richie paused for a moment, scratching an eyebrow and studying a scuff on the stage floor in front of him. The crowd got unsettlingly quiet and he started wondering whether to just cut and run, but his mouth had made him stumble headfirst into telling this story and he wasn’t quite cowardly enough to stop now. Or more accurately, it was like picking at a scab, poking at a bruise; he couldn’t have stopped now even if he’d wanted to._

Eddie, I mentioned earlier, was the Losers Club’s resident hypochondriac and first aid responder. He had a big heart. He was a nurturer. But he wasn’t _nice_. Eddie was proof that you don’t have to be nice to be a person who takes care of people, which was a life lesson I wish I’d been able to remember before this past month. Eddie was one of my two best friends, and we fought like a bag of cats. He was always the last one to say “Beep-beep, Richie” because that would have deprived him of the satisfaction of actually telling me to shut the fuck up. If I crossed a line with a mom joke, he was more likely to follow me right over that line to hit me back with an even nastier one.

Speaking of Eddie’s mom, she and I hated each other. We fucking hated each other. She hated me because I was Trashmouth and I was a bad influence on her darling son, who actually swore more than I did and taught me some important new words in the process. I hated her because she’s the one who turned him into a hypochondriac. It was some Munchausen's-by-proxy shit, if you're familiar with that. She convinced him he had asthma. He used an inhaler his whole life. Now, I once watched Eddie run like six blocks flat-out, and when he stopped he still had plenty of breath left to cuss me out, because I was the reason he had to run six blocks flat-out. What he actually had was anxiety. He was using an inhaler for panic attacks. That couldn't have been good for him. Don’t get me fucking started on the food allergies she always told him he had.

Myself, I usually vented the bad feelings this all caused by telling Eddie all about how I’d fucked his mom. She was also fat, so there was a lot of joke potential there. I never had any chance of resisting that temptation. Not a hope in hell.

Eddie, on the other hand, liked to cope with all these problems in his life by turning into a rabid wild animal anytime you got him away from his mom and then pissed him off, which was _really_ easy to do. Eddie was basically the Wolverine. He was little, he was always angry, everything around him was a potential threat on his life that might need to be taken out with extreme prejudice. Fucking, his superpowers had to do with his health. And spite. Up until he broke his arm clean in half when we were 13, I was half-convinced he had a metal skeleton, especially anytime he sat on me. He never had the metal claws in his hands like _snikt_ , which was to everyone’s benefit because nobody with an ounce of sense would ever have given that kid weapons, but that didn’t matter because he’d just shred you to pieces with his words instead. I would have died for him. That’s not a joke. It almost happened more than once.

> _His words were starting to get thick in the back of his throat. He went for another drink of water to give him time to get his shit together again. The crowd was still laughing softly at the funny parts but otherwise it was way too quiet. It felt like they were hanging on his every word, a career first. He was pretty sure a lot of them were catching on to all the past tense he was using._

So we’re 12 years old, and one morning before school we’re hanging out by the bike racks and I’m trying to convince Eddie to let me copy his Geography homework. Now, I’m only stupid in the ways that really matter in life; school wasn’t that hard. I could have done that homework myself. I just didn’t. Eds knew this as well as I did and he wasn’t fucking having it from me that day. He was like, “No, Richie. Fuck off, Richie. Absolutely fucking not, you lazy asshole.” But I’m desperate not to get detention again, and I’m a dumbass, so I keep pushing. And finally Eddie goes, “Richie you jerk-off, you had like two days to do this shit, fuck _off, no_.”

So I ignored every single warning sign that he was about to lose his shit, and I said, “Listen, Eds, I couldn’t find the time. I had my hands full.”

“With what, asswipe?”

“With your mom. You know she’s a lot of woman. It’s a full-time job.”

> _Richie broke when the audience laughed, needing three attempts to stop giggling enough to get words out again, which drew out the laugh from the crowd even longer, until he had to wipe tears from his eyes as he brought the mic back up to his mouth._

Ob-obviously--obviously, I was _super_ confident that this was going to get him to do my stupid ass a favour. Fuck. And as soon as the words left my mouth, this look flashed across his face like ‘you fucking dick, I walked right into that one’, but then! Not even a _second_ of hesitation, he looks me dead in the eyes and he says,

“Richie, I fucked your mom _and_ your sister and I still got the homework done, what’s your fucking excuse?”

And then he just turned and walked away! I’m actually an only child, but that didn’t matter. Twelve years old, and he dick-slapped me so hard with that comeback that I honestly believed for a fraction of a second that I _did_ have a sister, and that he had actually fucked both her and my mom just to teach me a lesson in time management.

So Eddie’s just walking away into the distance, like the Man With No Name, fucking… tumbleweeds blowing past. Bill and Stan are both standing there like ‘what murder did we just witness’, and I’m actually speechless. I can count on one hand the number of times in my life I’ve been speechless, and all but maybe one of those were Eddie’s fault, by the way. I’m standing there, can’t fucking, form words, watching Eds walk away from my cooling corpse after verbally decapitating me, and one single thought runs through my mind in that moment.

‘I want to kiss him _so bad_.’

> _A few isolated laughs came from the crowd and died off quickly. The silence in the theatre was ringing in Richie’s ears. He licked his lips, trying to figure out what to say next._

So the gay identity crisis kicked off as soon as I had that thought and carried me through the rest of the day, gave me something to focus on in the detention I got for not doing my Geography homework. Did I also spend some time on the fact that a) it was specifically my best friend I wanted to kiss, and b) I apparently really like them mean? Yeah, but those things came as less of a surprise. Even when I was under the impression I probably liked girls like a normal guy, you know, somewhere, deep down, hypothetically, even then I still understood myself _just_ well enough to know that oh yeah, absolutely my dream girl would be one who can assassinate me with one well-placed word. That’s the shit right there.

“Richie, how long were you friends with this fucking kid who regularly did exactly that to you, without realizing that _he was_ your dream girl and you had a tragic gay crush on him all along?” Look: I already told you that I am an idiot in every way that matters. Why else would I need to have a second gay epiphany 14 years after the first one? Entirely on the other side of puberty? I moved to New York when I was 18 and then to LA when I was 24, and it still took me until age 26, a semi-functioning adult man who jerked off regularly and spent all my time in cheap bars with drop-out stand-up comics and actors with drama degrees, to figure out that I am interested in dick. The memory loss thing can only carry me so far, right?

So that was me. Young Trashmouth. Twelve years old, gay in a small town, in love with my best friend who was just a ball of personified anxiety and rage, pretty sure nobody but me would _ever_ touch my dick, and occasionally getting beat up by crazy assholes, the ones who were in actual gangs, for never being able to keep my mouth shut.

Then we turned 13. This was the summer of, I think, 1989. Yeah. It was the year the Batman movie came out with Michael Keaton in it. The only good Batman movie.

Hmm?

Yeah, dude in the front row with an opinion, I’m not going to debate with you about this one.

Because you’re wrong, that’s why.

What was that? Catwom--listen, man. I have nothing against Michelle Pfeiffer. I don’t! She’s a perfectly fine actress. But I don’t know if you’ve been listening to my show up till now though, because if you had then I think it should be fairly obvious at this point that I was not the target audience for a PVC-wearing Catwoman.

Yeah, no, I was actually there for Batman, myself. And Lando Calrissian, a little bit. Because I’m attracted to men. Because I’m gay.

Mmhmm. You up to speed now, man? We good? Because, no judgment if you were just zoned the fuck out for the last however long I’ve been standing up here talking, and it was the word ‘Batman’ that activated you, fucking woke you up from standby mode. I’m not offended if that’s what was happening here; I understand that! I can identify with that experience on a personal level. You know, you and I actually have a lot in common. I feel a connection here.

I do! I’m not fucking with you, dude. Well, not much. So, uh, what’re you doing after this?

Oh, you’re busy?

You’ve got plans.

With her.

Oh.

He says he’s already got plans after the show, guys. With his girlfriend. It’s fine. I also… have plans. With people. After the show.

> _The crowd reaction to that stupid segue was a mix of laughter, ‘awww’s, and a couple well-placed wolf whistles. Richie allowed himself a shit-eating grin as he walked back across the stage for a quick water break._

“Woke up from my third nap at the Richie Tozier show because people were actually laughing at something, watched him say some shit about Batman and then get shot down by some straight dude in the front row. Saddest thing I’ve ever seen, going back to sleep now,” send tweet.

> _Richie stopped miming typing on a phone and looked over his shoulder back into the wings, where his manager was still just visible, arms still crossed._

Hey, are we actually gonna air this? Don’t tell me the truth, lie to me. Just tell me what I want to hear. I don’t actually know what I want to hear, but tell me that anyway. We’ll just edit this part out. If it’s a yes. So, yes? No? …Go fuck myself? All right, keep your secrets.

Yeah guys, I dunno, seems to still be up in the air. Where were we? Thirteen years old, 1989, summer! Batman! Batman was the only good thing that happened that summer. No fucking contest. That was the summer that Eddie snapped his arm in half and I learned that his skeleton definitely wasn’t adamantium. Guess what? I was the one who set it for him! And he did _not_ want me to do that. But I did it anyway. It was the worst break I have ever seen that didn’t include pieces of bone sticking out of the person’s skin. We were also inside this condemned, extremely haunted, derelict fucking crack house at the time, so thank god he didn’t have an open wound from it because he probably would have tried to self-amputate. So I set his arm for him, he screamed so loud my ears rang, I’m sure it hurt like a bitch, I had no idea what I was doing. But I guess I did a good enough job, because when I saw him three weeks ago his arm was still attached. He actually arm-wrestled me with that arm, which I assume was to show me that my first aid skills deserved more confidence than he’d given them. I didn’t need to be told that shit, I already knew it was true, but I accepted the clear apology that was in there.

That thing with the broken arm was not the most traumatic thing that happened to me that summer. Wasn’t even in the top five. But this is a comedy show, I guess, and also I really can’t tell you most of what happened anyway, because it was all either fucking unbelievable, or incriminating, or both, and I’m not following a script here tonight so I am almost definitely gonna say something regrettable if I try to talk about it. So we’ll save the mystery for my next special, which probably will never be allowed to happen, after I’ve had a chance to write it all down, edit the fuck out of it, and maybe also consult my shrink, and my lawyer. Check when the statute of limitations runs out on some of that shit. Man! For now, all you need to know is that resetting Edwina’s broken, floppy arm without his consent was entry-level shit on the psychological harm scale, and that I literally forgot all of it even happened for 27 years. And then when I did remember again, I projectile vomited and then like, dissociated for a while. I think, for this show, that’s enough information to go on.

After all that shit was done and over with, my friend Bev was the first one to get the fuck out of Dodge. She was gone right before school started back up in September. Went to live with her aunt. Ben, the combo new kid-slash-fat kid, his family packed up and left town that Christmas. He had to go meet his fairy godmother so he could become hot. Eddie… summer of 1990, like the _minute_ the school year ended, Eddie’s mom packed up everything she could fit in their car, every pill bottle in the house, and she moved Eddie away to Portland--Portland, Maine, not the cool Portland. Bill’s family lasted about another five months and then they fucked off, too, because one of the first shitty things that had happened in 1989 was Bill’s little brother disappeared without a trace.

> _The theatre was so silent that Richie could hear his own pulse._

I was the next one to go. I just fucking packed my shit and left town by myself. I know now that by that point, I couldn’t remember Bev or Ben at all anymore. I’d forgotten what Bill looked like. And the only two things I could still remember about Eds were the cast he’d had on his arm after he broke it, and the fanny pack he kept his first aid kit in--I’m not kidding, he wore a fanny pack day-in, day-out for our entire childhood. And I was attracted to him anyway.

Stan left town sometime after I did, I guess, and Mike just stayed. And I never saw or heard from any of them again, almost definitely couldn’t have picked them out of a police lineup--Bill actually became this really well-known writer, and I’d heard of him _as a writer_ , he doesn’t even use a pen name but I actually still didn’t remember that I grew up with him. Put your phones away; you can dox Bill after the show’s done, alright? So I never saw any of them again or remembered who they were until three weeks ago, when Mike tracked us all down and called us back. Well, Stan actually, I never saw Stan again at all, because he died before we made it back home. He was already gone. And it, uh. I’m still dealing with that. It’s only been a few weeks. Still pretty raw.

But the rest of us, we made it back there, and we remembered each other and what we used to have together, and then we did the shit we had to do, which, again, I will not be talking about with anyone but my shrink or my lawyer for a while. And now here I am, ruining your evening.

“Is this fucking asshole, after all of that lead-up, seriously not going to tell us about what the fuck happened when he saw Eddie again? I could be watching The Bachelor right the fuck now. There’s probably a baseball game on.”

> _Some supportively loud whistles came from the crowd, with a ripple of laughter afterward. Tentative, awkward, maybe a little relieved. First laughs since the bits about Batman and the broken arm. Richie took a steadying breath and tried to find some more energy._

I’ll never pass up a chance to disappoint such a large audience all at once. Yes, I’m going to tell you about Eddie.

I didn’t remember Eddie until I saw him again, but the second I did see him--or actually, I heard him swearing first, that was the trigger--it all came back like someone had hit me in the back of the head with a bat. It was a fuck-ton of displaced gay angst to reabsorb in about four seconds. I did not do a very good job.

We all met at this shitty Chinese restaurant near the highway, mostly because they could seat six people in a private room, and then we drank a lot and made fun of each other for two hours. I reconnected with Eds by doing an impression of his mom as Jabba the Hutt. He did not appreciate it, and that’s a shame. If you’ve ever seen me perform before, you’ve probably heard my Jabba the Hutt impression; I don’t like to brag, but my Jabba is pretty fucking good. Right? The man had no taste. I also found out he’d gotten married. To a woman! And that was pretty much the last chance we had for socializing before shit got weird, like, in general.

> _The crowd ‘awwww’d again, but sadly, not cutely._

Yeah, dudes, this isn’t going anywhere good. Buckle up.

Long story heavily redacted, Eds was the same person he was when we were kids--short, angry, constantly on the edge of violence, dark eyes you could drown in, language so filthy I don’t understand why I’m the Trashmouth--and all that did just as much for me at age 40 as it did at age 12. The wedding ring, that was a downgrade from the fanny pack. Would have liked to see that switched out.

I never told him about my crush. Never told him how I felt. It just never, there was never a chance to fit that in. I didn’t get a cha--well, that’s not. I bitched out. Couldn’t do it! I couldn’t do it. Is there ever a _good_ time for that shit? Does the _right moment_ ever come? Never did for me. I shoulda just, fucking, blurted it out over a bunch of alcohol, in front of all our friends. Ideally before finding out he was married. But I did not do that.

And that’s a regret I get to carry with me for the rest of my life, because after _Stan_ never made it _back_ to Derry, Eddie never made it out of there.

> _A collective gasp of shock. Richie was pacing the stage like a caged animal now._

He got hurt again. And I mean super fucked up. Like the arm break when we were 13, except this time there was blood loss. There’s a terrible fucking irony in the team hypochondriac being the only one who ends up with a fatal injury. I don’t think it’s Alanis Morissette irony, I think it’s actual, textbook irony. He got--

> _He stopped moving for a moment, facing blindly to stage left, his free hand held out in front of his stomach, palm flat towards his chest, moving in vague little circles. His other hand was white-knuckled around the microphone._

He got--he pretty much bled out, I guess. We couldn’t get him out of there, get him medical attention in time. There wasn’t enough time for him. It was a, a freak accident. Luck does not get shittier than that. So I just sat with him. I sat with him and held his hand, and lied to him and to myself that we were going to get him out of there and he was going to be okay. Because yeah, he was maybe the love of my life, but he was also my best friend, and I knew for sure that part was mutual.

And his last words were for me. I know someday they’re going to bring me peace, and I think he understood what he meant to me, at least on some level. Eduardo, that pocket-sized rage demon, that rabid fucking weasel trapped in a human body, was my soulmate. Platonic, or whatever, doesn’t matter. These were his last words, I swear on his fucking grave that I’m not making this up. I’m never going to forget what he said to me.

He said, “Richie, I need to tell you something.”

So I leaned in, to make sure I could hear him without him having to raise his voice. And he said,

> _The entire theatre seemed to be holding its breath in anticipation. Richie blinked wetly up at the spotlights and drew in a quiet, shaky breath._

“I fucked your mom.”

> _Richie never heard the crowd’s response; he had tunnel vision, moving on autopilot to jam the microphone back into the stand before making a desperate beeline offstage into the wings, disappearing behind the curtains on the opposite side from where his manager was waiting._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Richie Tozier was not impressed by the Nolanverse Batman movies and I am not accepting criticism on this point;
> 
> 2\. Really unclear to me from first viewing of Chapter Two whether or not Richie is still known as Trashmouth as an adult vs just accidentally saying it onstage the once while mid-flashback (much like it's unclear whether or not he actually did finish the set he was bombing at the start of the movie!), but I picked the former. Some names really do just follow a person around in life;
> 
> 3\. Whether this set killed or saved his career (or ever saw the light of day on Netflix) is left as an exercise for the reader, because I have no fucking idea;
> 
> 4\. If any of the Losers were at this show, they didn't tell Richie about it;
> 
> 5\. I neither know nor care whether canon properly sets out when anyone besides Beverly left town, so I winged it on the timeline here;
> 
> 6\. "A bunch of stuff from the story part didn't make it into his stand-up act!" - Unreliable narrators do be like that;
> 
> 7\. "There's not many laugh breaks?" - Yeah, the laughter is your job, you'll know better than I do how funny the jokes are.


End file.
